Category: Backcountry Press

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Manzanitas of Fort Ord: Creating the Field Guide I Needed

Manzanitas of Fort Ord

There is a quiet confession from me for the Field Guide to Manzanitas: I did not set out to make it because I was an expert. I made it because I wasn’t.

Years ago, while wandering through California’s chaparral and woodlands in pursuit of conifers, I began to notice how little I understood about the understory beneath them. I admired the polished red limbs of manzanitas and could recognize the genus on sight, but naming a plant to species was usually beyond me. The subtleties—leaf, inflorescence, burl structure, glandular hairs, habitat nuance.

So I did what I do when faced with a botanical or ecological mystery: I made a book.

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California Trees Wins National Outdoor Book Award

A celebration of craft, collaboration, and California’s native forests

Release from Backcountry Press

Kneeland, CA — Backcountry Press is honored to announce that California Trees: A Field Guide to the Native Species, co-authored by botanist Matt Ritter and ecologist Michael Kauffmann, has been awarded the 2025 National Outdoor Book Award (NOBA) in the Nature Guides category. This prestigious recognition celebrates excellence in outdoor writing and publishing—and affirms the enduring importance of California’s native tree flora.

Selected by NOBA for its clarity, scientific rigor, and exceptional design, California Trees offers a vibrant, accessible guide to all 95 native tree species found across the state. Through full-color photographs, detailed range maps, and clear botanical descriptions, the book illuminates the intricate stories of the trees that shape California’s landscapes—from coast redwoods brushed by Pacific fog to the whitebark pines standing resilient on alpine ridges.

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Conifer Country (second edition)

Jeffrey pine (Pinus jeffreyi) in the Klamath Mountains.

A note for you, lover of conifers

A few years after the first edition was first published, I was deep in the Siskiyou Wilderness in search of yellow-cedar stands. To my surprise another backpacker came stumbling through the brush. After we said hello, he got a smile on his face as he pulled a copy of Conifer Country from his backpack and asked for an autograph. My heart swelled with joy as we discussed how to tell the difference between yellow-cedar and Port Orford-cedar with both the book and plants in hand. This experience was grounding and simply lovely.

It has been 12 years since Backcountry Press first published this book. My wife Allison and I launched the business to support that publication. We took this risk to tell the story of science in interesting and engaging ways–to inspire deeper connections to the Earth. Looking back, I am amazed at what this project has brought us and the connections it has helped establish with the land and its enlightened people.

The books that built Backcountry Press.
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The Klamath Mountains: A Natural History

The Klamath Mountains

I could not be more proud of our new book. It is, in reality, a project 10-years in the making. I first started cooking up the idea when I finished Conifer Country in 2012 based on the fact that a natural history had never been written for the Klamath Mountains. Around 2015, during a winter gathering, I proposed an outline to a group of friends and asked who wanted to help write the book with me. Justin Garwood raised his hand and the rest is now history!

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